Living Room Transformation – Part 1

While I’m at it, I’ll try and keep going (maybe I’ll catch up to where we currently stand with our transformations/renovations & we’ll be pressured into finished them!) 😉 We recounted everything we have done so far, and yes, we have started (and progressed) with a zillion projects… but alas, we have yet to finish just (even?) one!! We’ll get there!!

Today, the first step in our living room… The Fireplace.

(which up to this day is still unfinished!)

Here is our living room ‘before’ shot (so way before, that this is still the previous owner’s furniture!)!

Previous owners furniture!

As you can see, they were consistent with the super white walls throughout the house (I can’t wait to show you what colour we have changed this room to!)!! We are fortunate (or unfortunate in terms of the work that goes with it), to have a wood burning fireplace! We have used this guy a lot over the last year that we have lived here… but hey…

Please revamp me!! Please revamp me!!

…don’t you think it needs an upgrade? Or is that pink tile horrible just to me?? And the outdated mantelpiece… This one was screaming out to us for a change… So we did!! 😀 (We started this on 15 February 2014!)

We started by cleaning and priming our tiles!! I’ve seen quite a few DIY posts on people painting their fireplace tiles… So I dove in… head first!! If I remember correctly, I did 2 layers of primer!

Keeping with my dark colour theme, I decided to matched the tile colour to the grey dining room, (hopefully) tying together these to rooms! I did a couple of layers of this as well!!

I think the above picture only shows one layer (because it is definitely not done yet!!)… Anyways, I sealed this paint with 2 coats of sealer as well. Note to anyone who wants to do something like this – I will paint on the sealer with a brush. I did this for the first layer, but the second layer I used a foam roller (why oh why did I do this?), and the finish had little bubbles. I still need to redo this… ugh!

Next up was that grotesque mantelpiece… We wanted to simplify this… We tore off the old… and started building the new! We chose out some crown moulding that we loved, and decided to try and make it work around our fireplace!!

Framing for the moulding!Detail up close

This is unfortunately as far as I can go without giving away any of the other changes that we have made… (but I will post these soon!). I can tell you that in terms of where the fireplace stands today, the only difference from the above pictures is that we have filled in the holes where we nailed that moulding into place and painted the wood & moulding with a few layers of white…

What do you think so far? Have you done any similar renovations? Still quite a few finishing touches to make to this baby!! Just keep watching this space!! 😀

Background info

This blog is the culmination of a couple of my previous blogs, now all together in one spot: Self-hosted websites 'Hoopla & Happiness' and my photography site 'LoveMeBlu Photography'. It also includes blog posts from one of my first blogs 'Living it up in Canada'.